As with the Seaboard, Linn is pushing the language of MIDI into unfamiliar territory.

The touch response is finely tuned, even following the velocity of your release, and subtle movements of each finger can affect the pitch and timbre of individual notes. The control surface has 128 pads, laid out like an eight-stringed guitar. In line with these visionary instruments, the LinnStrument runs circles around its more run-of-the mill peers. More recently, Linn’s hyper-complex Tempest drum machine has become one of the most admired and feared units on the market. Linn’s name is synonymous with innovation, having developed the LinnDrum (Prince fans, stand up) and the gold standard of hip-hop samplers, the MPC. Roger Linn Design LinnStrument 128 ($999)Īsking similar questions as the Seaboard, but from a slightly different angle, Roger Linn’s LinnStrument 128 is a keyboard that’s also a guitar neck that’s also a sequencer and a lot more. It’s like having a piano that can play the entire orchestra. This programming can then be applied to other controls like faders or knobs (arranged on your keyboard in a manner not dissimilar to a car’s dashboard), and mapped to essentially any parameter. The synth does the rest of the work from there. The basics are as follows: you press down a key on a MIDI keyboard, which sends information to your computer or synthesizer-at a minimum, it transmits which note is played, when it’s turned on and off, and how hard you strike the key (aka velocity). Developed in the early ’80s as a way to universally synchronize synthesizers and drum machines, its simplicity and elegance have kept it in use for almost 40 years, with a 2.0 version introduced remarkably only earlier this year. MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is the near-ubiquitous communications protocol used in hardware and software alike. “The way I want any home studio to function is… as fast as I can think of an idea I want to be able to articulate it.” What is a MIDI Keyboard? “To me it’s all about immediacy” says Billie Eilish producer Finneas, in an interview with AWAL. And with the leaps-and-bounds increase in quality of software synths, plugins, and digital audio workstations like Ableton Live, Logic, Pro Tools and other similar programs, plus the oft-overwhelming abundance of free effects and sample packs, a customizable workflow may be the most powerful tool you have.

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